A Home Of Our Own

It’s interesting how one of the first games that many toddlers play is mummies and daddies, and gravitating to the Wendy House corner at Playschool is seen as quite normal behaviour. There is no doubt in my mind that having our own space is very important to each of us, but in fact it is a very modern concept. You don’t even have to go back a century to find it quite normal for siblings to share a bedroom and for grandparents to be living in the front room of the family home. There were two factors at play, the first being the size of families (at the turn of the 20th century, Rena Champion’s father was from a family of 22 which was a norm) and the amount of accommodation the family could afford. Owning your own home is also a very mid-twentieth century development especially for Working Class people.

We bought our first house in the early 1970s at what seems on reflection like the worst possible time. The country was back on its feet and in boom time, people were more affluent and feeling confident, as a result of which house prices began to rise exponentially; on top of that the interest rates were eye wateringly high. We both had savings in the Leeds Building Society which we hoped would stand us in good stead when we came to apply for a mortgage, so we set about looking for a house that we liked. It wasn’t easy. Not only were houses selling fast but tales of people being let down through gazumping were rife. One minute you thought you had your dream home, the next someone had offered more money and it was tough luck if you couldn’t match it. And so the prices went, up and up and up.

It had to be the right house as well. We knew the area that we wanted to be in and Paul wanted a garage so when a little end of terrace house caught our eye we decided to go for it. It was two up, two down with a kitchen, no bathroom, an outside toilet, shed, and air raid shelter in the back yard, a nice garden and the all important garage. It needed an awful lot of work to make it decent to live in, but it was just in our price range.

Our first disappointment came when our application for a mortgage was turned down by the Building Society. It was nothing we had done wrong, but so much money was being borrowed that all the lenders were having to put a cap on how many mortgages were approved each month. You couldn’t even ask your bank as they were not licensed to back house purchases at that time. I tried several other Building Societies to no avail, there was nothing for it an alternative had to be found. Fortunately, somebody tipped us off that York Council were approving mortgages, a lot of this being tied in with the fact that Council House tenants had been given the green light to buy the house that they had lived in for years. We decided to take a chance although it wasn’t straight forward by any means and for weeks my lunch hours were spent cycling between solicitors and the council, acting as a courier with search papers, contracts and the like, but luckily it paid off. We had just agreed to buy a rundown terrace house for £6,400.00 with payments over twenty five years at a rate of 13 ¼ %. Laughable by today's standards but put into perspective, salaries and wages matched the prices we paid at the time.

The house had stood empty for long time having been owned by an elderly lady who had gone into a home quite a while before she died. We kept our rented flat on for a couple of weeks as there were a few jobs that needed to be tackled straight away to make the place habitable. First, we wanted to knock through from the small front room to the back to make a large L-shaped living room. But in removing the wall we had to take up the carpet which turned out to have its own secrets. Laid on top of linoleum, which in turn had covered quarry tiles, the whole floor was wet, and the damp was beginning to creep up the walls. Paul was amazing. Along with his father they chipped a level of plaster off the walls to get above the damp, then there was nothing for it, but the floor had to come up. The quarry tiles had been dug up along with a base layer of concrete and then it was down to the earth floor beneath. Both fifties fireplaces came out next as we intended to put in one modern fireplace in the main living area, and there we were, our new home was left a shell with a pile of rubble sitting in the middle of the floor.

I remember one hot day in early autumn that we chose to get rid of the rubble. We opened the sash window at the front of the house, got a huge old dust sheet and shovelled rubble out through the window into it. Then we gathered up the corners and carried it down the (very long) garden path ready to take to the tip. It was a hard and hot slog, and we had no idea that we were being observed in our labours, so it was a very welcome surprise when an elderly gentleman appeared and gave us some bottles of ice cold ginger beer. The gentleman turned out to be Mr. Jackson who lived in the street behind us, but such was the nature of the old village houses that he had access to a footpath that ran half way down the side of our garden. It was a simple act of kindness and generosity that I shall remember to my dying days.

Our transport was a Robin Reliant van that we bought deliberately for this purpose, and I hated the thing. It was some years before Del Boy had his yellow peril in Only Fools and Horses, and I can happily admit to being a snob. There were lots of them on the roads belonging to very working class people and, horror of horrors, each time we passed another one the driver would wave at us. We did see the funny side and yes, we did wave back. I’m not sure how many journeys we made to the skip in it, but eventually, with all our rubble disposed of we realised that the back suspension had gone and were lucky to sell it to a mechanic who was going to fix it up for his daughter.

My vocabulary took on a whole new set of words and suddenly I was talking about RSJs, plaster board and damp courses. There was still a lot of work to do, but Paul along with his father’s help, soon had the floor sealed and concreted over, the walls replastered, and the gas fire fitted with its new fire surround. The wallpaper needed stripping and every room turned out to have at least five layers, some of which had been painted over just to make life more difficult. We steamed and stripped and steamed some more and then I acquired a talent that I never knew I possessed; under the patient supervision of Phyllis, my mother-in-law, I became a dab hand at decorating! Chipwood with magnolia paint and a feature wall was very popular in the 1970s and it served us well. At last the house was ready for us to move into.

We hired a van and with the help of Paul’s brother and father we started to shift our furniture, thankful that we had sold our piano the week before. Everything went well until it came to the bed. It was a king size and was not built to go round the corner and up the narrow staircase. It was something that we had not considered, but Paul’s father did not see it as a problem. He would simply remove the bedroom window. I was horrified at the suggestion, but it was all in a day’s work to Joe and before I knew it, the window was out, the bed went in, and the window was replaced without any damage whatsoever.

The terrace of seven houses was on the outskirts of what was the original village of Heworth. There was a footpath running along the front of each dwelling with long gardens at the front. The Victorian buildings had previously looked out on an orchard which was part of the manor of Heworth, but an estate of comfortable semi-detached houses had been built on the land in the 1950s which stretched out beyond our gardens. Neighbours are so important and ours were lovely and very welcoming. An elderly couple lived next to us, and their son Raymond called in to see them most days. He tended the garden and cut the lawn and, much to our surprise and delight, cut our grass too. One night, old Mr. Newbold fell down the stairs and we knew we had to fetch Raymond but what a challenge trying to find the house as he and his wife June lived in a tiny village cottage set out of sight behind another small cottage and down a dark alleyway. It was actually only round the corner if you knew where to look, but it still took us all our time to locate, especially in the dark. Freda lived next to the Newbolds. She was a widow, very small and full of nervous energy. She would have done anything to help anyone, and you really couldn’t help but love her. Vera and Frank were next, then another widow, Mrs Harrison. We never really got to know the people in the last two houses but somehow the little Terrace had a real community feeling which made living there very pleasant and comfortable..

There was always work to be done in the house, however we didn’t start the rest of it straight away; apart from anything else we simply couldn’t afford to, but it didn’t take us long to get things in place and cosy. Top of the list was a bathroom and an inside toilet and once again Paul’s father came to the rescue. Paul and Joe between them partitioned the big back bedroom, put in a window a shower, toilet and wash basin and at last there were no more dashes to the loo in the pouring rain or the middle of the night.

But before all of this happened, we had to make alternative arrangements for personal bathing. Paul usually went to his parent’s house, but I worked at the County Hospital which had a large Nurses home and the Home Warden very kindly let me take a shower on a lunchtime. It all worked very well until one weekend. Paul’s parents had been down in Somerset all week but were still quite happy for us to use their bathroom. Paul had a bath, then put the water heater on for me to follow whilst he went home. The next day Paul returned from using the bathroom and informed me that I was in trouble. I had forgotten to turn off the water heater so that when my in-laws returned from their holiday later that day, they were greeted with a hall and bathroom full of steam, and hot water creeping down the stairs. I was mortified. I had been warned that the thermostat on the heater was faulty and had promised faithfully to switch it off. No prizes for guessing who forgot! Phyllis, my mother-in-law was a treasure and a bit of a character and the last thing I wanted to do was upset her. There was nothing else for it, I had to go and make my apologies. She met me in the living room, stony faced whilst she described the shock she had received when they arrived home after the long drive. I just wanted the earth to swallow me up. And then, much to my amazement she burst out laughing. It turned out that I had done her an enormous favour as she had been nagging Joe for more than a year to get the bathroom sorted out. They were able to claim on the household insurance for the damage I had caused and so not only did Phyllis get her new bathroom, but she also got the hall and stairs redecorated and a new carpet. But she was still close to murdering me at the time.

Putting a damp course in newly built houses was not introduced until 1875 and even then it was only compulsory in London. Our little cottage certainly didn’t have one and the damp created by the flooring didn’t help one bit. Once the bathroom was finished we turned our attention as to how this little problem could be treated. After a very enlightening conversation with the Buildings Officer at work I told Paul about a silicone product that could be injected into holes drilled into the bricks. After a further application to the surface of the bricks we could then replace the plaster. I was determined that we should get some. It was winter and the absence of the plaster made the room draughty, it also meant that there was forever a fine tilth of dust on everything. The nearest supplier was somewhere on an industrial estate in Leeds. I took a half day's leave from work, caught the train and went to get some. I do get some daft ideas, but it did work on this occasion even if I did regret struggling to get two heavy canisters of liquid back home. Joe to the rescue again and this time special drills had to be used as the bricks were rock hard, but the process worked there was a real difference once the plaster and skirting boards were fixed. We were able to finish decorating at last and celebrated with a new sofa and chair from Habitat.

The kitchen was the next area to concentrate on. I know it is fashionable to have a Butler sink nowadays, but I’m not a fan and the kitchen was too small, so ours went in the back yard as a planter. I wanted a useable layout in the limited space available. We needed a new window and door, a stainless steel sink and unit and worksurfaces and cupboards. It was naive of me to think that the work would be straight forward. The walls were uneven and the surface like concrete so that a special drill once again had to be used to fix anything. Eventually however, brute force prevailed and the new units went in. I had bought an old fashioned tall self standing kitchen cabinet and set about cleaning it up and stripping it down. With a fresh coat of canary yellow paint it gave me extra work space when the door was lowered and was bright and cheerful. I then managed to find a lovely yellow paper to match and my kitchen, small as it was, was complete. Time to relax and enjoy our little home.

My favourite Aunt and Uncle decided that they would like to pay a visit, and with all of my family living in the south of England it was a treat to be able show off our achievements to two of my nearest and dearest. They arrived after a long and arduous journey to find nobody at home. Paul had gone riding with Julia and I was visiting a friend in hospital, and what was supposed to have been a five minute stay and turned into something a lot longer. Another friend produced a bottle of wine and by the time I had wobbled home on my bike I was rather giggly. But, those lovely neighbours of ours came to the rescue and we found Auntie Jean and Uncle Fred settled in deckchairs in the garden enjoying a nice cup of tea. Their first stay wasn’t without incident. After a beautiful sunny May Bank Holiday Sunday, there was a sudden cold front and twenty four hours later it was snowing. Nobody could believe it. It brightened up for the rest of the week however and they were able to enjoy sight seeing in York, fell in love with Knaresbrough and thought Whitby was wonderful. We decided to take them to Sutton Bank before they left, and drove off in Uncle Fred’s car with a picnic. Auntie Jean was always a nervous traveller but she was enjoying the ride and the scenery, that is until we got to the bottom of the steep hill for Sutton Bank. For some reason that I can’t recall, Uncle Fred pulled into a layby. With nothing behind us, he pulled out again, but the car rolled backwards. He started again, and again the car rolled backwards. By this time Jean was out of the car and threatening to walk up the hill. Fred scratched his head, and Paul was puzzled. He got Fred to start the car again and watched what he did next, then burst out laughing. For some daft reason my gorgeous, dopey uncle had not put the car into gear. We told Jean to get back into the car and drove steadily up the hill, but she didn’t settle down again until we were safely parked at the top. The walk to the White Horse made up for it though, and they were both bowled over by the views. There was quite a display by the Gliders too, as they swooped overhead in the warm thermal air.

Auntie Jean and Uncle Fred really enjoyed their stay and I’m pleased to say that not only did they return for more holidays, but also brought my Auntie Molly and Uncle Toby with them.

There was just one final alteration shall we say, before the house was complete. No fairies at the bottom of our garden, just a bungalow to the right of us which had been built on a garden that had belonged to a terrace house in the street behind ours. This had left the footpath running alongside our property which I mentioned earlier, going to and from nowhere. Eventually the house was sold to a young couple, and I decided to approach them with a view to buying said footpath. I offered £100 plus solicitor’s fees (who just happened to be Paul’s uncle) and they snapped my hand off. The surface was just bare earth and we decided that it would be best as a footpath with a small vegetable plot at the end. Paul knocked a hole in the wall of the back yard to create a gateway, laying the ensuing rubble down for foundation. Next came the air-raid shelter in the back yard which was a waste of space and needed to come down. As usual, it was a very hot day when we got to work. I say we, as it was Paul who really did it, I just climbed on the roof and after a few whumps with a lump hammer I’d had enough. The rubble was down, the mortar was mixed, and the path was laid, and very good it looked too. Then with a new gate we at last had access to the back of the house without going through it. Completion.

I called at the house recently to ask if I could take a photo of the outside for my blog. Claire and Paul, the new owners are a lovely couple. They invited me in even though they were in the middle of preparing to go on holiday, and we had a lovely chat about the house, the history of the area and the neighbourhood. There have been many more changes since we occupied the place, and I have to say that it is looking good. I felt that I could quite happily move back in tomorrow.

I wish them both as much happiness, love and laughter as we had when we lived there.